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Belgium, the third most innovative country in the world14/12/2017

Belgium is the 3rd best country to live in if you want to innovate, just after Switzerland and Singapore.

You are an inventor, an entrepreneur, an innovator? No need to export to the United States in China or northern Europe to realize your dream. You will have the best chance of getting there ... in Belgium. Our flat country has no reason to be ashamed of its third place in the last annual index of the most innovative countries in the world of the German research institute Fraunhofer. Only Switzerland and Singapore do better.The report was unveiled at the end of July and is based on 2015 figures. It analyzes the performance of national economies in terms of innovation. Specifically, the Fraunhofer Institute, known for having participated in the creation of MP3 (audio) and MPEG (video) formats, used several criteria to develop its ranking.

• The performances of its companies: the turnover of the high-tech sector in relation to the GDP, the percentage of workers in the sector, the added value per hour of work, the high-tech trade balance per capita, the expenditures in R & D ...

• Teaching: the percentage of graduates, the PISA score in scientific subjects, the annual budget per student, the number of computers in the population ...

• Research: the share of citations in scientific journals, the number of patents filed by public research centers ...

If Switzerland is "the only country to achieve a high level of innovation in all the aspects taken into account in the study", the institute also salutes the performances of Belgium (3rd for the performances of its companies, 7th for research and 9th for education) which he already described last year as a particularly innovative country. By way of example, Belgium was the country where SMEs (23%) worked the most in collaboration with external partners on innovative projects. "Belgium is characterized by a functional and balanced innovation sector, which succeeded in developing its innovative skills ten years ago and then maintained its level in recent years," he wrote in 2016. while our country stagnated in 4th position.